Si & Charl On The Road: A Stroll up a Hill, Staff Party and Learning to Dive

As we left it last time we had just managed to discharge the expedition participants either onto flights back home or into the poor city of KK where they went onto engage in drunken chaos for a few days.

Having breathed a big sigh of relief as a staff team the obvious way for us all to relax was to then take on Sabah's 4100m Mount Kinabalu. Mount K is one of the main tourist attractions in Sabah and they sensibly limit the amount of people on the mountain at any one time. The mountain is too much for most people to get up & down in one day so most people stop at a resthouse part of the way up.

(Classic Malaysian sign at the park entrance. Not sure what it means, maybe run away from people with guns, seems like good advice to me)

The schedule pretty much went like this. 1200 noon start our climb at the national park entrance. 1500 arrive at Resthouse / Hostel after three hours and six km of uphill walking over a combination of steps and rocks. Slump knackered in seat and have a couple ot tea, put on beanie and fleece for the first time since arriving in Sabah. 1900 go to bed. 0245 get up continue climb. 0500 reach the peak in time for sunrise.

(For those with an interest in Botany this is a pitcher pant - a carnivorous plant that only lives at a certain height above sea level and feeds on dumb insects that fly straight into it for some reason)

(Charl & I at the top ! In the predawn dark....and cold)

The view is quite spectacular and worth climbing for. The climb goes from fairly hot highland jungle to bare rockface where it's really quite cold. Unless you're particuarly fit it's a recipe for a couple of days worth of pain after but it's one of these things that are just worth doing. They have an annual race up & down the mountain and some nutter has been up and down in 1h 54m. To put that in perspective it took us just under six hours to get up and that's pausing for dinner and a kip in between! Anyway that's about all there is to say about the hill so here's some photo's

When we finally recovered from the mountain it was time for the much anticipated staff party. Held on Pulau Tiga (or Survivor Island - so called because of the TV programme filmed there, don't remember it myself - think it was one of the first reality TV stuck on an island type shows), we had a day and night at a rustic place on this pretty island. It was a party of two halves...

We had the option to visit the volcanic mud baths. About half of us decided to make the trek (apprently about 20mintues away) and half stayed behind to chill on the beach. The trek was decidedly longer than 20 mintues (about an hour) and I was decidedly grumpy about missing out on beer to be trekking to some mud pools.

The mud pools proved to be worth visiting in the end though. Following a stylish, john smith's style bomb into the pool I emerged looking like the plasticine fella who was Morph's (From Art Attack) friend whose name i can't remember. It a weird sensation being totally immersed in mud - I actually had to pick dried Mud out from the inside of my nose at the end of it.

On return from the mud pools we found the rest of the group already well into a fairly large session. The bar had already run out of beer and had to send a boat to the mainland to get some more. After chucking my toys out the pram about the lack of beer for a while I settled for a G&T and a decent night ensued. To be honest Charl & I were still so tired from expedition and mount K we couldn't be bothered to party that hard, inevitably though there where a couple of casualties. I won't embaress my deputy expedition leader by posting the picture of him passed out face first in his dinner - just this one of him walking out the sea with a beach ball covering his private's.

(Alcohol & the Sea, Raleigh people would start talking about risk assessment at this point.)

(The walkway onto Pulau Tiga - I know, it's a hard life, someone's got to visit these places though)

(The staff team - complete with hangovers)

The day after the party we were kicked out of fieldbase and the official part of Raleigh was now well and truly over. First thing on the cards was to check into a half decent hotel for a few days - the D'Borneo, highly recommend it it as a midrange if anyone ever comes this way - and then get going on our open water Diver course.

We did the course with the outfit Raleigh used - Borneo Divers - over the course of four days. During the dives we saw turtles, Rays, Moray eels and a decent variety of fish. We're pretty keen to dive a lot more now - I can see it becoming a serious danger to the travel fund.